Long read: Book review of ‘India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of A Most Surprising Democracy’ by Madhav Khosla
Madhav Khosla is a superstar academic in the making with a formidable CV: “Madhav Khosla is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, the Ambedkar Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University, and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He works across a range of themes in public law and […]
How Policymakers Have Driven Economic Change in India
Post-1947, India’s economy has been through four distinct eras. Now, with socialism fading away and with the country increasingly operating as a free market economy, we see five distinct directions in which India’s economy will evolve over the next decade: (1) Profits will polarize in the hands of a few highly efficient companies; (2) Wealth […]
The Risks of Owning an Individual Stock
The majority of the listed companies in India fail to beat the market cap weighted index. In this newsletter, we discuss why the odds are stacked against an individual investor owning a small set of stocks. Over a longer investment horizon, returns of benchmark indices as well as the net wealth created in stock markets […]
Stress Test for Rising Giants
Marcellus’ Rising Giants portfolio (RGP) aims to discover companies with a high probability of entry into benchmark Nifty50 index over the next 3-5 years thus capturing the outsized returns that typically accrue to potential Nifty50 entrants. Over the past year, some of the RGP stocks have faced temporary headwinds mainly on account of Covid-19 demand normalization, […]
Portfolio Performance and Update on Fundamentals – Oct 2023 – Marcellus
Consistent Compounders Portfolio (CCP) Our portfolio companies’ reported fundamentals in 2QFY24 continue to demonstrate strength and consistency – portfolio’s revenue growth was 22% YoY and EPS growth was 28% YoY in the quarter ending 30th September 2023. Several of our portfolio companies reported revenue growth rates, significantly healthier than other players in the same industry. For instance, […]
11 Things I Learned About Investing
Plenty has been written about investing by investors or about investors. Here’s one piece which tells us why we should chart our own course whilst learning from the best. Frederik Gieschen starts by saying why our first job is to know ourselves: “…You have to understand your temperament and your relationship to money. Wrong about […]
Indian Single Malts Could Turn The Table On Scotch
As roughly a million Indians hit ‘crazy rich’ levels of wealth (see our blog https://marcellus.in/blogs/the-octopus-ascends-the-rise-of-crazy-rich-indians/) the quality of luxury tipples being sold in India is ascending to world class levels. As we approach Diwali and demand for Indian single malts roars, Bobby Ghosh adds to the festive cheer by informing us that “…a few weeks ago an […]
Why surge pricing is coming at restaurants, online retailers and more
We have seen surge pricing impact the cost of our taxi rides. This piece in the BBC says that we need to get ready to see it elsewhere in our lives as well and not just in the online world: “The concept of dynamic pricing is simple – and easy for businesses to implement. “Surge pricing […]
‘Ray, This Is a Religion’: Inside Ray Dalio’s Hedge Fund
Ray Dalio is not just known for founding Bridgewater Associates – the world’s largest hedge fund today. Many of us at Marcellus have also been inspired by his book ‘Principles’, especially his approach to building ‘radical transparency’ in the workplace. However, this week saw the launch of a highly critical book by Rob Copeland, a New York […]
The global network behind the fentanyl crisis
The opioid crisis in the US and the role of the pharmaceutical industry was brilliantly documented in the much acclaimed docuseries ‘The Crime of the Century’. Only now, it has been eclipsed by the far bigger fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl, a drug responsible over 70,000 deaths in the US last year alone is driving the world’s […]
Review of ‘Power and Progress: Our Thousand Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity’
Two weeks ago we began Three Longs & Shorts with a piece by the legendary VC Marc Andreessen in which he exhorted the world to stop listening to those who talk about the pernicious effects of technology and listen to techno-optimists like him (see https://marcellus.in/story/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/). In their book, “Power and Progress”, Acemoglu & Johnson, eminent economists […]
A Century Spent Answering Four Questions
Over the past century, every politician and policymaker who has governed India has wrestled with four critical questions: (a) Can the free market deliver economic development OR does the Government have to do the job? (b) Can India gain from opening itself to the wider world OR will the world act as a ‘drain’ on […]
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